INDIAN actress Freida Pinto, of Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire fame, said on Friday (March 15) she would have become a wedding planner if she had not succeeded in show business.
Pinto, a former model, said “my only passion was acting” but she had told her sister that if she hadn’t become successful by the age of 25, she would switch profession.
“But fortunately when I was 23, Slumdog Millionaire happened and so I didn’t become a wedding planner,” Pinto, now 28, told a conference organised by Indian media group India Today.
Since the actress shot to fame with the 2008 Slumdog Millionaire, she has worked in other international movie projects like Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Trishna.
She said that dealing with sudden fame with Slumdog Millionaire directed by Danny Boyle was difficult.
Since then, her biggest effort has been to avoid being stereotyped as the “token Indian girl” in Hollywood movies.
“I played the racial ambiguity card when I had to look for roles in the West,” she said.
“I didn’t want to be the ethnic Indian girl, but I had no problem doing (other) ethnic roles,” said Pinto, who has played Middle Eastern and Latin American parts.
She has so far avoided Bollywood movies and their overtly commercial song-and-dance routines, but she told the audience the type of films being produced by the Indian movie industry was changing.
“I can find my place here,” she said.
Indian media say she is set to make her Bollywood debut in as yet-unnamed movie directed by Navdeep Singh and Vikramaditya Motwane.
